Christmas bird count: Low numbers at Lake Apopka not much to tweet about

This year's Christmas Bird Count at Lake Apopka was a bit of a dud when it came to the event's cardinal quest: to spot feathers never seen before in the Orlando area.

Even the total number of species observed this year — 163 — was nothing to crow about, despite a pre-dawn-to-post-dusk effort by dozens of skilled bird-watchers.

Also hard to swallow was that some of the flying faithful didn't make an appearance.

"We got no least-flycatchers this year," count coordinator Wes Biggs said. "We've had least-flycatchers out there every single year since we started doing the count in 1998. Not a damn one this year."

Biggs' cause to grouse arises from the increasingly high expectations of those who turn out to quantify the variety of species that gather each winter at or near Lake Apopka.

The huge, environmentally ailing lake, a dozen miles northwest of downtown Orlando, was the scene of a mass pesticide poisoning in the late 1990s that killed nearly 1,000 eagles, herons, pelicans and other birds.

Just before the die-off began in full, 174 species were recorded during the Christmas 1998 count. That remains the nation's highest species count for an inland location during more than a century of Christmas bird counts at thousands of locations. (Coastal areas have the advantage of attracting both seabirds and land-dwelling birds and so produce even higher counts.)

After the poisoning, the former Lake Apopka farmland that had been turned into marsh as part of a large-scale restoration project was drained to prevent further deaths. The annual species tally plummeted to the low 150s in subsequent years.

But the area has been making a swift comeback: Two years ago, 173 species were observed, which led some to predict even higher counts in coming years.

Why the birds didn't turn out in larger numbers this year on Dec. 17 isn't easily explained.

"It's sort of like you get a great basketball team and on one individual day they do lousy — they get knocked off by a team that everybody knows isn't as good," Biggs said.

"That's the same with a Christmas bird count. On an individual day, the weather can be lousy. Maybe there are several hawks hanging out in a particular area where you are looking for certain birds. And sometimes you just don't have a clue what happened."

Still, the Apopka counters who spread out across a 15-mile-wide circle at the north end of Lake Apopka didn't gather back at headquarters for the roll call of species until after dark and had some remarkable sightings to report.

The best of the day was a Say's Phoebe, a Western bird rarely seen in Florida that has now been spotted at Lake Apopka for four years in a row.

Other highlights included:

•Greater scaup ducks, usually at home on saltwater bays, which turned up at a small, freshwater lake in the city of Apopka.

•Ash-throated flycatchers and blue grosbeaks, two birds not seen much during the winter in Florida.

•A dickcissel, which isn't known to breed anywhere else in the state. "Down in Zellwood there's a whole bunch of them," Biggs said.